Become Addicted to Hard Things

 

We live in an era of cultivated weakness. Our age celebrates convenience as if it were a virtue and equates struggle with oppression. People scramble for shortcuts, “life hacks,” and effortless pleasures, then wonder why they feel hollow. The modern human is addicted, addicted to ease, to sugar, to dopamine-drip entertainment. The tragedy is not that people seek pleasure, but that they do not realise pleasure without difficulty is counterfeit. The real addiction worth cultivating is to hard things.

Hard things define civilisation. The ancients who carved stone into cathedrals, who navigated seas without maps, who endured hunger, toil, and war, they lived lives steeped in hardship. Yet from their struggle came beauty, progress, and meaning. Our forebears did not survive because life was easy. They survived because they were tough enough to endure the hard and wise enough to embrace it.

The paradox of the human condition is that the harder the task, the more alive we feel. Climbing a mountain hurts. Studying philosophy strains the mind. Building a business risks humiliation and ruin. Training the body resists every lazy instinct. Yet in the crucible of difficulty, the self is forged. In doing hard things, man realises his power.

The soft life, by contrast, breeds only decay. The person who fears pain never knows strength. The person who avoids conflict never knows victory. The one who insists on perpetual comfort ends up enslaved to the very comforts he worships. Sloth is not neutral, it corrodes, it consumes. The easy path is not easier in the long run; it is merely slower suicide.

To become addicted to hard things is to rebel against the spirit of our age. It means making struggle habitual and endurance second nature. It means seeking resistance not as an obstacle but as nourishment.

What does this look like in practice?

• Read difficult books. Force your mind to wrestle with ideas bigger than yourself. Plato, Aquinas, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky. Chew slowly and choke on greatness.

• Lift heavy weights. Train the body until your bones ache and your muscles burn. Strength is the foundation of freedom.

• Learn skills that humble you. Play an instrument, master a language, code, paint, anything where failure is frequent and progress slow.

• Endure silence. Put away screens and distractions. Confront the vast emptiness of your own mind until it speaks to you with clarity.

• Go Ruck! Put on a rucksack filled with weight and walk. This builds real world strength.

• Engage in hard conversations. Defend your beliefs, listen to your critics, steelman your enemies’ arguments. Truth survives only in battle.

• Build something that could collapse. A business, a book, a family, a community. Risk ruin; only then do you create something worth saving.

• Confront your fear. Do what terrifies you, speak in public, ask for what you want, stare down rejection. Fear is a compass, pointing to growth.

The addiction to hardship is the only addiction that enlarges you instead of depleting you.

We must reject the cult of ease. Let others bow before comfort and distraction. Instead, pursue difficulty until it becomes your craving. Treat suffering not as a curse but as a forge. For the man addicted to hard things, every day is a chance to sharpen his edge against the whetstone of reality.

Weak men wait for easy lives. Strong men make hard lives worth living.

 

We are a mote in the eye of God. That phrase alone should strip humanity of its arrogance, yet we stagger on as though the universe were crafted for our convenience. Our age worships progress, technology, democracy, rights, as if these were eternal monuments. But all of them are fragile constructs, mere scaffolding around a species that could be wiped away by a single geological shudder or a solar breath.

Humanity’s conceit lies in its refusal to accept scale. We imagine ourselves as the measure of all things, when in reality we are less than an eyelash in the cosmos. The Earth is a dust-speck in a galaxy of a hundred billion stars, and our galaxy is but one pinprick in a web of two trillion others. Against this backdrop, our wars, our parliaments, our utopian manifestos are children squabbling in the corner of a collapsing cathedral. And yet, remarkably, we persist in believing our petty ideological quarrels have cosmic significance.

The religious mind once recognised this humility. Medieval man feared the wrath of God because he knew his place: contingent, fragile, infinitely small. But modernity has inverted this order. We no longer fear God, we attempt to replace Him. We speak as though “human rights” were written into the structure of the universe itself, as though “climate change” were not a minor blip in the billion-year cycles of the planet, as though our laws could bind nature herself. It is the madness of ants lecturing the flood.

To see ourselves as a mote in the eye of God is not despair, it is liberation. It dissolves the narcissism of progress. It strips away the illusion that history bends toward justice, or that civilisation is permanent. The universe owes us nothing. Our survival is not guaranteed. Indeed, the astonishing fact is not that we may one day vanish, but that we are here at all. The real miracle is the mote’s existence, suspended in the divine gaze for a fleeting instant before being brushed away.

This knowledge should cut us down to size. It should make us sober, disciplined, less enchanted by the cults of ideology. But instead, we puff ourselves up with ever greater pride, ever more absurd claims of self-sufficiency, as though we were masters of destiny rather than fragile passengers on a cosmic raft. To accept our littleness is not to embrace nihilism, it is to accept reality. It is to be freed from the hubris that drives empires to destruction and philosophies to madness.

We are a mote in the eye of God. The sooner we realise it, the sooner we might begin to live truthfully, not as gods, not as insects, but as men.

Why I Call Myself a Conceptual Engineer.

 

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I. Philosophy: From Courage to Obscurity

The title philosopher has not always been the empty bauble it is today. In antiquity, it denoted courage. Socrates, in Plato’s Apology (Apology 29d–30b), stood before Athens and declared he would rather die than cease questioning. Philosophy was understood as a civic duty, a devotion to truth even against collective pressure.

By the medieval period, figures such as Thomas Aquinas treated philosophy as theology’s handmaiden, but it retained conceptual rigour. In the Summa Theologica (ST I, Q.2), Aquinas deploys distinctions so precise that even his opponents must acknowledge the clarity. Philosophy was labour, not theatre.

The Enlightenment reinforced this ethic: Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), wrestled with the limits of knowledge itself. Hegel, though dense, sought system rather than smoke.

Contrast this with late 20th-century philosophy. Derrida’s Of Grammatology (1967) canonised a method where meanings perpetually defer, never stabilise. Foucault, in Discipline and Punish (1975), rendered power omnipresent, leaving little ground for stable norms. Žižek transformed discourse into a carnival, more spectacle than argument.

The fall is evident: philosophy once prized courage and clarity; it now rewards opacity and performance.

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II. Conceptual Engineering: A Different Ethos

The term “conceptual engineering” was first seeded in analytic philosophy by Carnap (Logical Foundations of Probability, 1950) and revived in recent meta-philosophy (Cappelen, Fixing Language, 2018). It denotes the deliberate revision of concepts to improve their use. Unlike deconstruction, it insists on repair. Unlike scholasticism, it insists on clarity.

The engineer is accountable. A bridge that collapses ruins lives. A concept that collapses—say, “freedom” defined so loosely that tyranny masquerades as liberty—ruins societies. Concepts are infrastructure, not toys.

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III. Historical Parallels

• Socrates: In Plato’s Euthyphro, he stress-tests “piety,” exposing contradictions. Prototype conceptual engineering.

• Aristotle: In the Categories and Metaphysics, he insists on definition as prerequisite for demonstration.

• Aquinas: His “Five Ways” rest on sharpened terms (“motion,” “cause”), not loose talk.

• Frege & Russell: Eliminated ambiguity in mathematics—engineering at its most precise.

• Wittgenstein: In the Philosophical Investigations (1953), he treats philosophical problems as linguistic knots, to be untangled by engineering clarity.

These are models of conceptual craftsmanship, not performance art.

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IV. Methodology of Repair

1. Mapping – trace a concept’s uses (e.g., “freedom” in law, ethics, politics).

2. Diagnosis – identify contradictions or conflations.

3. Steelman Opponents – articulate their best rationale.

4. Revision – clarify or disaggregate the term.

5. Stress-Test – trial against hard cases.

6. Iteration – refine through counter-argument.

7. Civic Translation – ensure public intelligibility.

This is not play. It is disciplined, accountable labour.

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V. Case Studies

• Freedom: Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty” (1958) distinguished negative from positive liberty. The conceptual engineer insists on such distinctions in debate, so rhetoric cannot smuggle in tyranny.

• Justice: Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971) defined distributive justice; Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) defended entitlement. A conceptual engineer ensures the term “justice” is not waved about without precision, preventing its use as an empty talisman.

• Equality: From Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to modern debates on equity versus equality of outcome, the engineer insists on clarifying: equality of what? status, opportunity, resources, or results?

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VI. Why I Reject “Philosopher”

To call oneself a philosopher today is to risk association with grant-funded obscurantists and theatrical poseurs. It is to invite the suspicion that one traffics in riddles rather than arguments.

To call oneself a conceptual engineer is to signal an alternative tradition: Socratic stress-testing, Aristotelian distinction-making, Aquinian rigour, Wittgensteinian clarity. It is to treat concepts as infrastructure: bridges for thought, not baubles for display.

Truth requires foundations. Those who build them are engineers, not illusionists. That is why I prefer the title of conceptual engineer: not a conjurer of mysteries, but a craftsman of clarity.

12 Habits of Discipline

Eat no more than 3 meals per day without snacking.

When humans eat frequent, small meals it's called snacking, when animals do, it's called grazing. Grazing animals eat constantly to be fattened up for slaughter. Snacking is what causes obesity and fatness. Snacking is a symptom of boredom. When we have nothing better to do, we stuff our faces with high-carbohydrate junk food, getting fatter in the process.

Wake up at 5am every day for 30 days.

Waking up early every day is absolutely necessary to become a disciplined Ass-kicker. There is so much to be done every single day, and early morning is the best time to get things done. When the whole world is sleeping and being lazy, you're already awake and already kicking ass.

Take cold showers every day for 30 days.

Cold Showers Make You Strong. Taking a cold shower certainly isn't comfortable; it's downright unpleasant. Forcing yourself to do it day in and day out requires a strength of character that most people don't have. The good news is that you can develop that character. Just get in the cold shower and do it. You will build inner strength by pushing through it.

No Masturbating or Internet Pornography for 30 days.

Masturbating to internet porn does not do a body good. Internet porn is like a drug. The endless variety available on the internet causes you to constantly search for the perfect scene (or “score”). The constant visual stimulation leads to massive overstimulation of the brain. That overstimulation releases dopamine (dope) into your brain. In other words, it's your “fix”.

Do 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups and 100 body squats every day for 30 days.

A healthy body begets a healthy mind. Our bodies cannot be healthy when they are fat and/or weak. Bodyweight exercises are phenomenal for developing discipline and strength. Bodyweight exercises kill two birds with one stone: they make you strong and they burn fat.

100 pushups, 100 sit-ups, and 100 body squats must be done every day for 30 days.

Dress for success every single day for 30 days.

The way you dress says everything about you. If you dress like poop people treat you like poop. If you dress like you respect yourself, other people will respect you too. It isn't a matter of being “metrosexual”, it's a matter of pride. A proud man presents his best self to the world every single day.

For the next 30 days you must dress your absolute best. Think James Bond. That means a dress shirt, tie, suit jacket - the works. Imagine you are going to a very important meeting that stands to make you a lot of money, imagine you are going on a date with a beautiful model, heck, imagine you are Bond and dress like that. 

Maintain and complete a 'to-do' list every single day for 30 days.

A to-do list is essential for completing your goals. It is imperative to write down your goals so you can visualize exactly what needs to be done.

Every single night make a 'to-do' list on your notebook and add 5-10 things that must be accomplished the next day. From small tasks like going to the bank to big tasks like finishing up gigantic projects, everything that needs to be done needs to go on the 'to-do' list. No task is too big or too little for the 'to-do' list.

Every day for 30 days you must keep correct posture, stand up straight, chest and head held high, and make eye contact with everyone.

A broken dog cannot maintain eye contact. It must look away. A proud dog will make eye contact. Your posture and eye contact say everything about your self-respect. If you have none you will stand with a slouch, you won't make eye contact and you will not hold your head high.

Every day for 30 days your answers to yes or no questions are “Yes” or “No”. Excuses and explanations do not follow your answer.

For other questions you must have a definite answer. There is no need for the baloney that follows a “Yes” or “No” question. A recruit in boot camp will say “Yes, sir” or “No, sir”. He doesn't say “No, sir! But you know it's not really my fault, I mean. Kevin over here is kind of to blame too. And you know we didn't really have a lot of time and blah blah blah...”

Every day for 30 days you must keep a notebook and pen with you.

With the mental clarity 30 Days of Discipline will provide, you will have many ideas floating around in your head. A notebook is needed to jot them down whenever they occur.

Work towards your very definite goal.

This is the most important part of 30 Days of Discipline. This is why you will become disciplined, so you can ACCOMPLISH what you need to accomplish, so you can kick the ass that needs to be kicked. You will do 30 Days of Discipline to light the fire under you to accomplish your one very specific goal.

You can take a lazy Sunday morning and afternoon, but Sunday evening is used to prepare for the week ahead.

On Sunday morning you can wake up later than normal, you can have yourself a big old breakfast of pancakes and French toast smothered in syrup. You can skip the pushups, body squats and sit-ups. You can spend an idle afternoon browsing the internet or watching TV. You can be lazy all morning and all afternoon on Sunday.

Sunday night is a different story. Time needs to be set aside on Sunday night to go over all the notes scrawled in your notebook. On Sunday night you need to look over your previous 'to-do' lists and make sure everything has been finished in an acceptable way.

Twitter - The Political Gutter!

There is a moment, after abstaining from social media, when one realises that the true narcotic is not the information itself but the manner in which it is delivered: fragments, barbs, half-thoughts. Sixteen days away from the scroll is enough to sober the mind. Upon return, what once passed for intellectual sparring reveals itself as little more than synthetic noise, contrived conflict designed to distract, not to edify. The feed is not corrupted because you left it; the feed is corrupted because it is, by design, corruption.

Why, then, should anyone devoted to serious thought remain? Twitter promises reach but delivers only exposure, exposure to the mediocre, the hysterical, the trivial. It is a marketplace where attention is the only currency, and the cheapest form of attention is outrage. To work within its confines is to submit to its tempo: shallow, instantaneous, forgettable. And when you write for the tempo, you begin to think at the tempo. The platform colonises your mind.

Those who argue for staying will say that one must “be where the people are.” But if the people are camped in the digital gutter, should the writer lie down beside them? Great polemic has never depended on mass platforms; it has depended on clarity of thought and durability of style. Burke did not need a timeline. Orwell did not need an algorithm. If their work circulates widely now, it is because the quality of the work transcends its medium.

The intellectual task is not to surf the current but to stand against it. Social media reduces thought to spectacle: cleverness replaces clarity, slogans masquerade as analysis, and one’s “following” becomes a substitute for intellectual authority. But authority is not built on applause; it is built on rigor, truth, and the capacity to withstand the hostility that truth provokes.

To re-enter Twitter after cultivating higher taste is like returning to cheap liquor after developing a taste for wine. Yes, it burns, yes, it provides a fleeting buzz, but the hangover is longer, and the taste grows foul. Far better to build on sturdier ground: long-form essays, the discipline of the page, the endurance of the written word.

The writer who aspires to sharpen polemic does not need the algorithm’s validation. He needs solitude, reading, and an audience that seeks him out not for amusement but for substance. To return to Twitter is to descend back into the pit and call it visibility. To stay off it is to love obscurity enough to cultivate real depth, until, one day, the world comes looking for what only depth can provide.

Ama Nesciri

“Ama nesciri.” Love to be unknown. Few words strike so hard against the modern instinct. To live unnoticed, to choose obscurity in a world intoxicated by visibility, is not just countercultural, it is a form of rebellion against the entire architecture of contemporary vanity. And yet it is precisely the rebellion one should embrace if one intends to live with any seriousness, any dignity, or any sense of mastery over oneself.

The cult of visibility has grown so totalitarian that it no longer merely encourages display, it demands it. The man who does not advertise himself is treated as suspect. The woman who refuses to curate her persona online is regarded as lacking. Social media has trained the masses to equate recognition with value, exposure with existence. It is not enough to live; one must be seen living. Not enough to know; one must be known to know. It is a sickness of the spirit that mistakes applause for achievement, and attention for substance.

To love to be unknown is to stand against this sickness. It is to recognise that notoriety is not only unessential but corrosive. Fame, even in its smallest doses, is the most powerful solvent of integrity. Once a man’s worth is tethered to being perceived, he ceases to act according to truth and begins to act according to spectacle. He ceases to ask “What is right?” and instead asks “What will be seen as right?” Every gesture becomes performative, every virtue contaminated by calculation. He becomes hollow, a shadow on display.

The one who loves to be unknown preserves a higher freedom. He is not dependent upon the eyes of others for validation. He thinks in solitude and acts without need of witness. His life is measured not by likes or by headlines, but by the harder, quieter standards of reason, honour, and conscience. He is opaque to the crowd, yes, but transparent to truth. He cannot be easily manipulated because his soul does not feed on recognition. He cannot be bought because the currency of fame is worthless to him.

This does not mean retreat into cowardice or eremitic withdrawal. To “love to be unknown” is not to flee the world but to refuse servitude to its shallow economy of attention. It is to prioritise substance over image, to choose the patient labour of mastery over the fleeting intoxication of being noticed. It is to build, not to posture; to pursue the good, not the glamorous. History shows that those who achieved most were rarely those who craved most to be seen, rather, they often endured obscurity as the price of discipline, emerging into renown only when their work left the world no choice but to acknowledge it.

You should love to be unknown because it is the surest guard against corruption of the soul. You should love it because it liberates you from the dictatorship of appearances. You should love it because what matters is not whether your name circulates but whether your life was lived in truth. Let others scramble for recognition like beggars in the street, clutching at the crumbs of notoriety; you will stand apart, unbent, unmoved, building strength in silence.

Better to be unknown and unpolluted, than known and compromised. Better to live unnoticed and whole, than applauded and hollow. In obscurity lies not insignificance, but armour. Ama nesciri: it is not a retreat, but a weapon.

Begin Building Yourself Up!

Not as a pastime, not as a fashionable exercise in “self-care,” but as the first principle of a serious life. The reason is brutally simple: most people are incapable of motivating you. They are not motivators, but inhibitors. The average man does not climb. He drags. His instinct is to neutralise the superior impulse, to smother the flame of ambition under the blanket of collective comfort.

One must see the majority clearly, without sentiment. They are ballast, not sails. Their function is to stabilise, to weigh, to prevent movement. Left to themselves, they drift nowhere, and they will ensure that you drift with them. To expect motivation from such a population is to expect direction from a stone.

The modern age multiplies this tendency. It canonises mediocrity and institutionalises weakness. Our culture tells the strong man that he must apologise for being strong, the disciplined man that he must excuse his discipline, the ambitious man that he must dull his edge. Equality is presented as a moral good, but in practice it serves as a mechanism of suppression. It is the means by which the capable are shackled to the incapable, and the willing are made to serve the unwilling.

This leaves the serious man with a narrow but certain path: self-construction in defiance of the herd. Not “personal development” as consumer culture markets it, but something colder, harder, more absolute. The deliberate cultivation of body, mind, and will to standards that the majority neither understand nor respect. Read what they dismiss as too demanding. Train when they collapse into leisure. Cultivate silence where they cling to noise. Each step in self-building is also a step away from the collective.

There is no need to court their approval. Their praise is indistinguishable from envy and carries no value. A fortress does not ask to be admired; it exists to be impregnable. So too with the individual who builds himself correctly: he does not seek applause but autonomy, not recognition but resilience.

Civilisation does not decay because the weak are weak. It decays when the strong decline to be strong. The herd will always be numerous, always be inert, always demand comfort. The question is whether there will remain those few who refuse to sink with them.

Self-building, then, is more than personal preference. It is a duty, to oneself, and indirectly to civilisation itself. In an age designed to dilute and soften, the act of becoming harder, sharper, more disciplined is not only rebellion; it is necessity. The world does not need more companions in mediocrity. It needs exceptions. Build yourself until you become one.